Stanford takes day to exhale

Mark Fainaru-Wada, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, March 24, 1998

Monday had to be a day of recovery and reflection, of regrouping and reacting, so Mike Montgomery gave his players the day off. How else to cope with the events of the past two weeks, when the Stanford Cardinal blew through Chicago and survived St. Louis - enduring final exams along the way - to reach the Final Four?

The tears have dried up by now, Arthur Lee's death stare has dissolved, and, with a day to dwell, now seems an appropriate time to reflect on the previous two weeks and the one that lies ahead - which will build up to a Saturday meeting with Kentucky in the national semifinals of the NCAA Tournament.

Actually, one of the most remarkable things about the Cardinal's run to the Final Four is that they never played their A-game. Granted, much of that might have had to do with the opposition, but not all of it.

For example, during the four-game prequel to San Antonio, the Cardinal got little, if any, offensive push from Kris Weems and Peter Sauer. Weems, who came into the tournament averaging more than 13 points per game, made just eight of 34 shots and averaged only 5.0 points.

Sauer hit one or two big baskets, but he was mostly a non-factor, winding up on the bench at the end of every game because Montgomery often went with a smaller, quicker lineup. Sauer averaged only 5.8 per game, after coming in with a 9.7 scoring average.

"The interesting thing is how much better we can be," Montgomery said.

Still, they can't be much better than they were during the stunning final 59 seconds Sunday, when they turned what seemed to be a certain loss into their ticket to San Antonio - a 79-77 victory over Rhode Island in the Midwest Regional finals.

If nothing else, the miracle minute demonstrated that Stanford has a player (Lee) who can take over a game, a quality possessed by many a national championship-caliber team in the past.

As difficult a notion as it is to accept, and as much as the idea flies in the face of a team sport, Lee single-handedly won Sunday's game.

"Arthur just got that look in his eyes, that he was going to take over and make plays," said forward Mark Madsen, who missed his first seven shots in the regional final and wasn't nearly the force he had been in the first three games of the tournament. "It looked bleak for a little while. But as he began to make the plays, I think the spark of hope began to get brighter."

The Cardinal also have working for them the knowledge that anything can happen. They will be clear underdogs to Kentucky on Saturday, but what does that matter in a tournament in which Valparaiso made the Sweet 16 and Utah took Arizona?

Stanford probably can gain some confidence from that Utah-Arizona game, which in some ways looks like the Stanford-Kentucky matchup. The bigger but slower Utes were supposed to get run out of the tournament by the Wildcats but instead put on a clinic in routing the defending national champions to win the West.

Of course, who's to say how the Cardinal will respond to reaching the Final Four? Their preseason goal was simply to get there, which seemed reasonable. Teams like Arizona can set goals to win the national championship, but teams like Stanford, at least at this stage, set the mark at getting there and then just seeing what happens.

Now that they're there, though, the Cardinal are saying all the right things. And it took some of the players no time at all to begin the look ahead, to think about what they want now that they've got their shot.

"We're not just going to the Final Four to say we're there," said sophomore guard Ryan Mendez. "We're going there to play."

But can they play with Kentucky? Montgomery not only has to brace himself for dealing with the Wildcats, he has to brace himself for a week's worth of questions about whether his team is quick enough to hang with Kentucky.

Speed is not a popular topic with the Stanford gang, and the Cardinal grew increasingly defensive about the subject when grilled about it in Chicago in games against the College of Charleston and Western Michigan.

Surely, the Arizona blowouts and the 20-point loss at Connecticut will be rehashed as attempts at illustrating the hole in the Cardinal's game. And surely Lee will grow tired of what he sees as an insult to his game.

Maybe, though, that will work in Stanford's favor. As Rhode Island found out, you don't want to mess with Lee.&lt;

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